> I was surprised and touched by their loyalty

They were loyal to money, nothing to be touched by.

It's not clear to me how many of the undersigned did so under some degree of duress. Apparently there was a lot of pressure from the senior employees (those who had the most $$$ to lose) to sign.

Well, to be fair, the board just tried to evaporate a lot of $$$ from most employees.

Any unionising effort consists of employees convincing other employees to join them. Some people will care more about the union's goals than others, and you can be certain that those who care more will pester those that care less to join their cause.

What happened at OpenAI was not a union effort, but I believe the comparison is excellent to understand normal dynamics of employee-based efforts.

Like a cult reciting their vows of allegiance.

Literally reciting too. To the point of copy-pasting the same tweets.